Abstract

This paper appraises Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and the need for a reform of existing legal framework in Kano State. In Kano State, public-private partnership projects are seen and heard of in more recent time, with little or no statistics of their actual numbers. However, from the accessible records, there are at least dozen public-private partnership contracts signed between Kano State Government and different investors; amongst them are the Kanawa Economic City Project which was the first known public-private partnership initiated in 2006. Kano State being sub-national government had in its recent development plan, adopted public-private partnership as the most popular initiative to encourage the private sectors to pursue the development of its ageing and inadequate infrastructure. The study finds that whatever initiative or framework a government adopts or operates, it can succeed provided that, an infrastructure master plan; transparent procurement system; strong regulatory institution like PPP unit or office with experts in law and commerce; and fiscal support and discipline from government exist. Therefore, sustaining public-private partnership requires the creation of a robust legal framework, driven from the following key fronts: (i) Laws or law that support the process (regulatory mechanism) - the rules of the game need to enable the governments’ entities to enter into PPP contracts, and the private sector to charge fees and recover their investment without overly constraining the project development in an open competitive and transparent process; (ii) People to drive and implement the process (Institutional mechanism) - the staff with the right political support and training and with access to sufficient funding, located in the right government department, to drive the project development and implementation process; and (iii) Government support and risk management (Fiscal mechanism) – for project development and implementation of PPP projects, in particular those to be financed by the private sector, government support is a key to its commercial viability.